Northwest Medical Cannabis Alliance

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office has stepped up its drive to close illegal medical marijuana dispensaries, notifying operators and landlords of 140 pot shops that they must close immediately. In a letter sent Monday, the office targeted dispensaries that did not file applications to participate in a lottery to [...]

Patients and caregivers say New Jersey should rework the state’s plan to regulate medical marijuana. They spoke up at a state Health Department hearing Monday. It’s been more than a year since the state passed a law to allow patients with certain conditions to use marijuana. Since then, the administration of [...]

If all goes as planned, the Rhode Island Department of Health will announce Tuesday who has been selected to open dispensaries that will legally sell marijuana to patients who have been certified by doctors as needing the drug to help cope with debilitating pain or disease. But even if the groups proposing dispensaries go on a [...]

Organizers of a Toronto marijuana festival say the streets will be crawling with hungry, thirsty, blissed-out protesters if the city doesn’t change its decision to withhold a permit that would allow the group to use the lawn of Queen’s Park. The Toronto Freedom Festival has been held since 2007 and happens at the same time as [...]

Montgomery Blair Sibley may be best known as the lawyer who defended the D.C. Madam, the infamous escort service owner who claimed to attend to the needs of Washington’s elite. Sibley has a new focus these days, one that’s luring a rabbi, a waitress, a State Department technician and a gaggle [...]

With his electrician’s tool belt and company logo cap, Rick Schmidt looks every bit the small-business owner he in fact is. That he often reeks of marijuana these days … well, it is just part of the job, he said. “I went on a service call the other day — [...]

Current U.S. drug czar and former Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said he returned to the rainy Emerald City to talk about prescription-drug abuse, but he found that marijuana was on the mind of Seattleites. In an afternoon meeting with The Seattle Times editorial board, which last month called for the [...]

About 90,000 Michigan residents have received approval to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. Since voters passed a law legalizing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes two years ago, a reported 90,000 residents have successfully received a state-issued medical marijuana card. But it’s the suspicion of Berrien County Prosecutor Art Cotter that many of those carrying cards [...]

A Medford man says the courts are practicing medicine without a license by denying him access to medical marijuana while he’s on probation. Joshua Brewer, 22, was convicted by a Jackson County jury in June for the unlawful manufacture and possession of marijuana.  Brewer, who has a medical marijuana card, was sentenced to 60 days in [...]

Pot growers will get six months in jail if they have a grow-op with six or more plants, if the federal Conservatives can pass a tough-on-crime bill, says Abbotsford MP Ed Fast. Since taking office, Stephen Harper’s government has been trying to establish a minimum jail sentence for growers, Fast said. “This is a very important bill [...]

A University of Massachusetts-Amherst professor says he’s dropping his nearly decade-long fight to persuade the government to let him grow marijuana in bulk for medical research. Horticulturist Lyle Craker wanted to cultivate marijuana to boost research into the plant’s potential medicinal benefits. But he’s been rebuffed — even as more than [...]

Marijuana makes for strange bedfellows. Liberal Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans are finding common cause in supporting a House bill that would legalize medical marijuana. “This is a bill whose message has been heard loud and clear,” said bill sponsor Rep.  Evalyn Merrick, a Lancaster Democrat.  “I sense we’ll have a good deal of support on both sides [...]

For a brief, smoky moment last fall, this economically challenged city seemed poised to become the nation’s most aggressive when it comes to growing and taxing medical marijuana. Those hopes have been dimmed considerably in recent weeks, though, since an exchange of letters between the city attorney and federal law [...]

City Denies Business Licenses Federal Way has declared that two medical marijuana dispensaries are illegal businesses. Conscious Care Cooperative and GAME Collective both received cease-and-desist letters from the city in January.  The city denied a business license application from Conscious Care Cooperative, which opened in January at 29500 Pacific Highway S. The denial is [...]

18 Distribution Centers Eyed in Bay State Pot “Wal-Marts” like those planned for California and other states could throw open their doors in the Bay State, as momentum builds for the legalization of medical marijuana. Two years after Massachusetts decriminalized possession of small amounts of pot, a bill pending on Beacon Hill would allow prescriptions for medical [...]

A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday. The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center was confirmed to The Associated Press by his [...]

As a polio survivor who advocates for (and uses) medical marijuana, I was cautiously optimistic that the medical marijuana law proposed by Del. Dan Morhaim and Sen. David Brinkley (HB 291 & SB 308) would come out of the Health and Government Operations and Judiciary committees of the legislature with favorable [...]

A Maryland lawmaker is attempting to salvage a bill that would legalize medical marijuana after the state’s top health official testified that provisions regulating the drug’s use and distribution were inadequate. Delegate Dan K. Morhaim, Baltimore County Democrat and the bill’s co-sponsor, said he is working to address concerns raised [...]

Among the questions left unanswered by Washington’s medical-marijuana law: Can legal use of medical marijuana get you fired? Thirteen years after voters approved its use, that question is likely to be answered by the Washington Supreme Court, which heard a test case on the issue last month. It involves a woman [...]

Gov. Martin O’Malley’s chief public health adviser Monday dealt a potentially fatal blow to efforts to legalize medical marijuana in Maryland, opposing legislation under consideration in the General Assembly in part because he said it does “does not provide for meaningful limits.” Joshua M. Sharfstein, secretary of the Department of [...]